Arun Kashyap

Senior Policy Advisor,
Private Sector Division of the UNDP

Arun Kashyap is Senior Policy Advisor in the Private Sector Division of the United Nations Development Program. Previously, as UNDP's Climate Change and Clean Development Mechanism Advisor, he led UNDP's engagement in mitigation of and adaptation to climate change in partnership with diverse stakeholders including private sector. Earlier, Kashyap was Associate Director, Global Environment Division, at the Rockefeller Foundation where he designed strategies to build global leadership capacity for equitable development and entrepreneurship-based models for provision of sustainable energy services. Prior to that, as Senior Project officer with the Commonwealth Agricultural Bureaux International's Regional Office in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, he was responsible for capacity development activities and projects in environment, agriculture, forestry and human health in the Asia Pacific region. He also managed the Forestry Research Support Program for the Asia Pacific knowledge network to promote multi-stakeholder partnerships for meeting the needs of the poor through sustainable forestry management.

Kashyap has considerable practical experience in designing, strategizing, implementing and managing development work in governmental, inter-governmental, private, and multilateral settings. On the policy side, he has helped countries integrate global mandates into national development priorities. His current work focuses on supporting national private sector development in UNDP's client countries including through public private partnerships to meet the Millennium Development Goals. Kashyap is working on models for provision of inclusive financial services including credit, savings and market based safety net mechanisms like micro-insurance that build upon the role of remittances in the context of strengthening entrepreneurship. Kashyap also has experience in engaging the private sector in building up recovery efforts following natural disasters. He is managing a project on community based sustainable water and sanitation services as a part of Tsunami recovery process in Maldives, Indonesia, Sri Lanka and Thailand. Kashyap worked with the High Level Commission on Legal Empowerment of the Poor (chaired by Madeleine Albright and Hernando de Soto) in the preparation of the report on Business Rights. Recently, he was been invited to join the faculty of Asia Pacific Center for Security Studies in Honolulu as an adjunct professor.

Kashyap began his career in the Indian Forest Service. As a Deputy Conservator of Forests/Deputy Chief Wildlife Warden he managed innovative and participatory forestry management strategies in the remote northeastern state of Arunachal Pradesh. His academic background includes a PhD in economics and business administration from the East West Center and the University of Hawaii, master's degrees in business administration, economics and physics, and a post-graduate diploma in forestry.